Thanks to Valerie for the copy of Piper’s Desiring God. I’ll start on it as soon as I’m done with Dickens’ Bleak House, which has occupied my reading attention for over a year now.

(I’m almost at the end, though. Mr. Tulkinghorn has revealed to Lady Dedlock his knowledge of her secret past, and Mademoiselle Hortense has offered to Tulkinghorn her services to ruin the Lady, only to be rebuffed with the threat of arrest. Lady Dedlock’s illegitimate daughter, Esther Summerson, however, annoys me to no end with her syrupy first-person narrative. And Mr. Skimpole, the caricaturish idiot, deserves to be dragged out into the street and shot repeatedly.)